“the King” or “the Crown” = synecdoche for England.

And how is this segment even close to being considered “news?”

Nor sure why the King’s status as a figurehead is relevant to the teabagging phenomenon, even if it were strictly true.

It’s not precisely relevant to the modern tea party protests, but Hannity repeated a common myth – that the colonists were rebelling against the policies of a tyrannical king rather than the policies of various members of parliament – suggesting to me that he’s never been in a university-level course on the American Revolution, or read much academic literature on the subject. I’d imagine he’s read a few conservative-tilted books intended for popular consumption. It’s a minor point, but it’s gotten wrong often enough that it’s worth correcting.

If anyone objects to my use of “many”, I can only say I’m supplying as good documentation as Parthenon is. The point is that the presence of very undesirable people among revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries is not unusual, and shock at it is a red herring.

It is not at all a red herring, and I apologize if this fact hurts your feelings, but it was more widespread among the sons of liberty than you’re suggesting. And the ‘very undesirable’ people committing those acts were never punished, to my knowledge. If you really want to find out a little more about the sons’ behavior in those days, I’d recommend to you I.R. Christie’s ‘Crisis of Empire: Great Britain and the American Colonies 1754-1783.’

I’m as patriotic as the next guy, America is a lovely place, but I’m not so blinded by hagiography that I can’t see that the lives of innocent people were ruined by ‘the sons of liberty’ and a large portion of the claims in the declaration of independence were flatly false. And if you object to the use of the words ‘large portion,’ I could comb over the declaration claim by claim and post a critique of each one, if you don’t mind waiting a few weeks until I have the time.

Many of the British officers working to put down the Revolution were war criminals, putting out bounties for the scalps of American rebels and hanging captured soldiers on the pretext that they were not really soldiers because they didn’t have the right uniforms. Gee, that kind of sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

If anyone objects to my use of “many”, I can only say I’m supplying as good documentation as Parthenon is. The point is that the presence of very undesirable people among revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries is not unusual, and shock at it is a red herring.

If you really want to find out what a bunch of ignorant rowdies the pre-revolutionaries were, pick up The First American Revolution by Raymond Raphael and read what the guys in the backwoods of Massachusetts were writing to each other in 1774 to early 1775. Plagiarists, too: they said a lot of stuff that sounded just like the Declaration of Independence. 18 months before it was written. This might be food for thought. (BTW they did actually mistreat British officials, no doubt about it. And tarring and feathering is a pretty ghastly action.)

Hannity, obviously, is a piece of shit who knows nothing of the history and doesn’t care.

Many of the sons of liberty were basically terrorists, tarring and feathering and even killing people they saw as too pro-Britain.

And Hannity, to nobody’s surprise, is a fuck.

Long way to go to make a point, Hannity.